by Monk Eastman, New York City, NY, USA
I am pleased to wake up without my throat slit. No warnings painted on the wall in my own blood, no severed horse's head laid artfully at my feet. Just the warm, familiar smells of roasted coffee and steaming plantains. For a moment, I am almost fooled into thinking I conjured Cecilio Goncz from the bottom of a shot glass, and that I am actually hungover in my bed back on Pitt Street, Mississippi lapping a lazy tattoo at my door, Althea in the kitchen, preparing chickory and mofongo. Smile faintly, thoughts of sunning in my garden, watching the river roll by, maybe going to the French Quarter for some afternoon shopping.
Then I see the amber bedposts, the crennelated diamondine doors, great blue emptiness where Althea should be beside me, and the smile fades.
This is not Pitt Street and I am not in New Orleans.
This is Oakland. It is not my home.
The room knows my favorite smells, music, and foods; the room knows my news habits. So, before I'm even out of bed, I've seen Northern California's armies continue their police action on the East Side, because Sgt Enrique Pernil of the Golden Bear Republic Guard is broadcasting, with attendant maps and footage dancing across my skin. I listen to Khaled Bhargouti snark New York City's mayor for his latest public cocaine-and-ladyboy binge, bug-eyed mug-shots spinning three-sixty in the space behind my eyes. I chuckle as Eiko Orizumi's scathing assessment of Alaskan President McMenniman's foreign policy trickles through my left cochlear. That chuckle dims when my other ear echoes with news of sabotage on the Minneapolis SonicRail en route to Chicago (still counting the dead, aerial view of the disaster splayed beneath the skin of my right thigh). Above the chorus of morning news, word from the east, where The Voice of Free Sacramento declares his insurgents' victory over Prime Minister Pivens, images of the gutted city rolling across the palms of my hands.
Having met the Benny Pivens, I have a very clear vision of the tantrum he must be throwing right now. He had planned on parachuting into the wartorn city from California One, make a media event of it, sound the horn of the Golden Bear. After all, he made reclaiming Sacramento a keystone of his domestic policy; the whole 'Project: Normal' phase of his Golden Bear Initiative, ending in a single, functional government. Given the resources he's thrown at it, Sacramento's continued disobedience has become this terrible hemorrhaging gut wound in public perception. A Padanian commenter whispers seductively of regime change as the quick fix. His counterpart in Bogota cackles that regime change implies swapping heads, leaving some kind of system intact. As all his opponents have been dispatched with russian efficiency, Benny Pivens is the only system left. Somewhere in the chorus, I hear an economist moan of the next global contraction. Guandong's investment in the NoCal peseta, she says, hangs around the economy like a lead weight. Others hope at reconciliation with America to offset the creeping chaos. Or some kind of deal with Canada. Or Alaska. Or even Federal Mexico. A thousand geniuses light the dark with their brilliant analyses. It is, after all, the age of the prodigal amateur, and we are only too eager to engage.
I rise, shower, let the sonics flow over me, through me, shaking the filth off like a shaggy dog. It's not the same as a water shower, where there is at least a loose sense of baptism, renewal. The soundbath just insures no one gets me by spiking the pipes. Paranoid? Not after Ottawa, where the subject of my story tried to very politely shake me off his track with a tailored H-621 virus in the plumbing. I reason that if you're running among wolves, why tempt them with an exposed throat?
I throw on a simple white kaftan and orbiter boots, grab my gobag and let my luxury quarters go about cleaning and sealing itself from prying eyes. Once I'm out of range, the newsfeeds slough off like dead skin.
This morning, the lobby is a vaulted cathedral of white Italian marble, its streetside entrance a psychedelic animation embedded in diamond doors. Tomorrow it could be an angular ice palace made of sharp crystal and topaz. Or a replica of Napoleon's Court. Or a kitschy remix of Katz's Delicatessen on New York's Lower East Side. The whimsy of the Palma de Baía is legendary.
Onward to Oakland and a day without the specter of Cecilio Goncz and his pall of rape camps and genocide.
I hope.
I am pleased to wake up without my throat slit. No warnings painted on the wall in my own blood, no severed horse's head laid artfully at my feet. Just the warm, familiar smells of roasted coffee and steaming plantains. For a moment, I am almost fooled into thinking I conjured Cecilio Goncz from the bottom of a shot glass, and that I am actually hungover in my bed back on Pitt Street, Mississippi lapping a lazy tattoo at my door, Althea in the kitchen, preparing chickory and mofongo. Smile faintly, thoughts of sunning in my garden, watching the river roll by, maybe going to the French Quarter for some afternoon shopping.
Then I see the amber bedposts, the crennelated diamondine doors, great blue emptiness where Althea should be beside me, and the smile fades.
This is not Pitt Street and I am not in New Orleans.
This is Oakland. It is not my home.
The room knows my favorite smells, music, and foods; the room knows my news habits. So, before I'm even out of bed, I've seen Northern California's armies continue their police action on the East Side, because Sgt Enrique Pernil of the Golden Bear Republic Guard is broadcasting, with attendant maps and footage dancing across my skin. I listen to Khaled Bhargouti snark New York City's mayor for his latest public cocaine-and-ladyboy binge, bug-eyed mug-shots spinning three-sixty in the space behind my eyes. I chuckle as Eiko Orizumi's scathing assessment of Alaskan President McMenniman's foreign policy trickles through my left cochlear. That chuckle dims when my other ear echoes with news of sabotage on the Minneapolis SonicRail en route to Chicago (still counting the dead, aerial view of the disaster splayed beneath the skin of my right thigh). Above the chorus of morning news, word from the east, where The Voice of Free Sacramento declares his insurgents' victory over Prime Minister Pivens, images of the gutted city rolling across the palms of my hands.
Having met the Benny Pivens, I have a very clear vision of the tantrum he must be throwing right now. He had planned on parachuting into the wartorn city from California One, make a media event of it, sound the horn of the Golden Bear. After all, he made reclaiming Sacramento a keystone of his domestic policy; the whole 'Project: Normal' phase of his Golden Bear Initiative, ending in a single, functional government. Given the resources he's thrown at it, Sacramento's continued disobedience has become this terrible hemorrhaging gut wound in public perception. A Padanian commenter whispers seductively of regime change as the quick fix. His counterpart in Bogota cackles that regime change implies swapping heads, leaving some kind of system intact. As all his opponents have been dispatched with russian efficiency, Benny Pivens is the only system left. Somewhere in the chorus, I hear an economist moan of the next global contraction. Guandong's investment in the NoCal peseta, she says, hangs around the economy like a lead weight. Others hope at reconciliation with America to offset the creeping chaos. Or some kind of deal with Canada. Or Alaska. Or even Federal Mexico. A thousand geniuses light the dark with their brilliant analyses. It is, after all, the age of the prodigal amateur, and we are only too eager to engage.
I rise, shower, let the sonics flow over me, through me, shaking the filth off like a shaggy dog. It's not the same as a water shower, where there is at least a loose sense of baptism, renewal. The soundbath just insures no one gets me by spiking the pipes. Paranoid? Not after Ottawa, where the subject of my story tried to very politely shake me off his track with a tailored H-621 virus in the plumbing. I reason that if you're running among wolves, why tempt them with an exposed throat?
I throw on a simple white kaftan and orbiter boots, grab my gobag and let my luxury quarters go about cleaning and sealing itself from prying eyes. Once I'm out of range, the newsfeeds slough off like dead skin.
This morning, the lobby is a vaulted cathedral of white Italian marble, its streetside entrance a psychedelic animation embedded in diamond doors. Tomorrow it could be an angular ice palace made of sharp crystal and topaz. Or a replica of Napoleon's Court. Or a kitschy remix of Katz's Delicatessen on New York's Lower East Side. The whimsy of the Palma de Baía is legendary.
Onward to Oakland and a day without the specter of Cecilio Goncz and his pall of rape camps and genocide.
I hope.
2 comments:
I'm riveted to this story.
Marie
That is a gracious compliment from a talented writer in her own right.
Thank you kindly for reading, and even more for commenting.
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